Dangerous Conjurings by Anne Armistead is a Scary Reads for Halloween pick #99cents #pnr #giveaway
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  • N. N. Light
    • Oct 25, 2023
    • 5 min read

Dangerous Conjurings by Anne Armistead is a Scary Reads for Halloween pick #99cents #pnr #giveaway



Title: DANGEROUS CONJURINGS


Author: ANNE ARMISTEAD


Genre: HISTORICAL PARANORMAL ROMANCE


Book Blurb:


Desire, betrayal, fate. Can love conjure all?


With the mysterious and handsome Civil War veteran Marcus Quinn at her side, Leah Sullivan chases after the evil conjurer who has kidnapped her brother. The couple's passion heats up while sleeping under the stars, inches apart and surrounded by peril. However, a cruel twist of fate reveals the devastating secret about Marcus's past that breaks Leah's heart and jeopardizes her brother's rescue. Will Leah's love for Marcus be powerful enough to forgive his betrayal? Or will dangerous conjurings doom their future together?


Excerpt:


December 1864

Near Savannah, Georgia


Chapter One

No Turning Back


I never thought I would ask a hoodoo conjurer for help.


But then, like most, I never thought we would lose the War.


And lose so many we loved.


We could only pray the War’s never-ending death would come to an end, no matter what the defeat brought us. Its consequences had already been dire enough, with the fighting so near we could smell the smoke of destruction.


I slowed my mare to a walk and kept an uneasy watch for the enemy on my way to the conjurer’s cabin. Cloaked in the deep shadows of the familiar forest by the Ogeechee River, which I’d known since childhood, each snap of a twig unsettled my nerves.


Rumors were rampant the South would surrender soon. We’d heard the Yanks were a day’s ride away, maybe closer, from our town of Trinity, which stood in their path to Savannah. “I intend to make Georgia howl,” General Sherman had boasted while burning his way from Atlanta to the sea.


My mare Zullie’s breathing left cloud-puffs in the December air. I tugged Mama’s patched cloak closer around me and snuggled my chin into her frayed gray woolen scarf. The remnants of her lilac cologne reminded me of more civilized days, when girls such as I would be turned-out in tightly corseted wide-hooped dresses, ready to conquer hearts. However, the heart I had always longed to conquer had been stilled in battle.


I would remain Miss Leah Sullivan, never to become Mrs. Fitzgerald Barnes.


A black vulture swooped through the bare branches of a tall sweet-gum, startling Zullie into dancing sideways. It settled on a bare tree limb and began hissing from its perch. Such scavenger birds spoke of death. Like War, they left behind the skeletons of those they’d picked clean.


Ghastly images of the bodies of my would-be betrothed and of my brother William flew into my mind. They lay unburied, their bodies left for desecration on a battlefield far from our Georgia home. My muscles tightened with anger over their loss. They had given all for The Cause, but it hadn’t truly been our cause at all.


The Sullivan and the neighboring Barnes families had always been intertwined like honeysuckle vines, being non-slave-holding Catholics and farmers of adjoining acreage. We had grown up together, Fitz and his sister Ava, William and me. The unspoken expectation was that our families would be joined through our marriages, Fitz to me, Ava to William. Our futures would establish the next generations of Sullivans and Barnes. Our lives had been neatly planned.


But secession became the serpent in our Garden of Eden, tempting our menfolk with the poison of glorious War. Our family patriarchs did not support the taking up arms against the Northern states. They advocated for peaceful settlement of the country’s differences. The roar of cannons at Fort Sumter destroyed that possibility.


When the call to arms came, both Fitz and William succumbed to its lure of glory and adventure and enlisted. The lines of the poem Fitz quoted to me as he rode off never left my thoughts. I could not love thee dear so much loved I not honor more. Bitterness over those words twisted my heart, for his honorable soldiering had held our love hostage before taking him from me forever.


Our fathers, acting on that deep pull of ancestral desire to protect their offspring, followed their sons into battle. Only my father returned, his body minus an arm and his soul minus any peace.


Only one thing could bring solace to my family now, the one thing over which my mother obsessed. Seeking it had spurred my secret, dangerous visit to this conjurer’s cabin.


Pungent odors of musty wood and spicy incense wafted through the air, redirecting my moroseness back to my mission. My dreaded destination must be near. Reaching the clearing by the banks of the Ogeechee’s swirling black water, I reined my horse to a standstill.


There it stood.


Kali Despierre’s shanty was not an inviting one. Its walls leaned precariously. Smoke rose from its unevenly stacked stone chimney. A faint cackle of chickens sounded nearby. Hoodoo rumors rushed into my mind, of black hens being sacrificed to get blood for spells. Of other living things rumored to be sacrificed, too. Black cats. Babies.


My body quivered, not just from the cold.


Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):


Grab your e-copy on sale for 99 cents for a very limited time!


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What makes your featured book a must-read?


Dangerous Conjurings is a Southern Gothic second chance romance set in the post American Civil War Old South. A spiritually damaged heroine and an emotionally wounded hero are drawn together to defeat a dangerous hoodoo conjurer while falling in love against the backdrop of hanging moss and murder, hoodoo and voodoo, hexes and the grotesque.


Giveaway –

Enter to win a $10 Amazon gift card:

Open Internationally.

Runs October 25 – October 31, 2023. Winner will be drawn on November 1, 2023.



Author Biography:



Anne's novels include the historical paranormal romance Dangerous Conjurings and the historical romance With Kisses from Cécile (winner of the 2020 Georgia Independent Author of the Year in Historical Fiction). She has written a sweet contemporary romance, A Christmas Cannoli Kiss. Her recent release is A Tryst in Paris, Book One of The Carousel Time Traveler historical-fantasy romance series, which introduces Mirabelle Montgomery as a time traveler in 1900 Paris and Jacques Thibaut, a dangerously sexy French rogue who steals her heart.


Learn more about Anne at her website www.annearmisteadauthor.com where you can sign up for her newsletter and find her social media links. She'd appreciate any follows, likes, and shares as well as book reviews!


Contact Anne directly at anne@annearmisteadauthor.com to ask questions, invite her to book clubs, or just say hello!


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